


a carcass for the vultures to colonize

by robinsegg



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - My Own Private Idaho (1991) Fusion, I... didn't think that would be a tag frankly, M/M, Mostly Henry IV, No Sex Work in this fic though, Past Child Abuse, References to Shakespeare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-15 01:55:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29181381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robinsegg/pseuds/robinsegg
Summary: He didn’t ask about money, because they both knew Adam didn’t have any, and he didn’t ask about his life, because they both knew Adam didn’t have one. He hated that dependence. There was at times a beautiful balance between willful ignorance, amnesia regarding one’s condition, and a horrible make-belief that Gansey was just like him that made the pill of their existence easier to swallow. This shattered that, this notion that Gansey could whisk him away to a foreign land and dangle all the reasons Adam would need to go without ever having to say them. The pull Gansey had on Adam was horrifying, and intoxicating, and infuriating all at once. It was like noxious fumes, and Adam always pulled off the gas mask for him.“And my mother is looking for me again,” he said, sheepishly, though not really, because Gansey wasn’t ashamed really.And Adam dragged his feet a little and fantasized about the cushy office job he’d never have and said, “I’ll have to get back to you,” and walked to nowhere but away.
Relationships: Richard Gansey III/Adam Parrish, Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish (Implied)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	a carcass for the vultures to colonize

**Author's Note:**

> This was going to be part of a larger story that I just never ended up finishing, and I think that the 5k I've written is frankly going to burn down my google docs if I keep it there any longer, so here it is. I said it's a MOPI fusion, but there isn't any sex work in this, just some of the beats of the story plus Adam as a Mike Waters-esque figure. There's some depictions of child abuse in this, though nothing graphic. One other note: there's a scene or two that I pick up from Henry IV (like in my own private idaho)-- you should be able to tell by the difference in language, but the most notable one is the phone convo between Gansey and his mother. Thank you for reading!

_HENRIETTA_

“I’m a connoisseur of roads.”

He closed his eyes. A house fell from the sky. The earth had a smiling face and a path that stretched across it and the world was not for him but it was beautiful anyway, he would take it anyway.

Adam woke up. Gansey held him in his arms, the forlorn expression of kings splashed across his face. They were sat by a fountain, birds flying overhead and people, upscale people like Gansey, turning up their noses at two faggy street rats.

Gansey was rocking them, slowly and soothingly. It made Adam want to burrow up in his jacket and fall asleep again. He could. It’s not as if he wouldn’t let him, as if he wouldn’t be tickled by how comfortable Adam was around him.

Instead, he croaked, “How long was I out?” He wrapped an arm around Gansey’s neck and pulled himself up, still sat in his lap.

“Not so long. Only about an hour. You started walking from China Palace and collapsed near here.” He said this all so casually, stroking his hair. Like it didn’t matter. Adam didn’t nestle into it, but he didn’t push him off. His brain always felt so knocked loose from its rightful place when he was like this, always felt like he was about to rocket back into the beyond space. Someone gripping onto him, holding him inside his body, it was helpful.

They breathed. Salmon swam upstream. 

They’d never kissed. Other stuff they’d done, when Gansey was needy or Adam was feeling unreal, but they’d never kissed, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to.

Gansey tugged at his hair. “Are you ever going to do something about this? How can you survive with no support system? Have you even visited a doctor?”

“With what health care, Gansey?” He sighed. “And don’t say yours.” His mouth closed.

Adam got up, rubbing his eyes. He wanted someone to tuck all of the mangled bits of him back inside his body, the jagged lines and gunk that had managed to worm its way out. Sometimes he wanted Gansey to try, but Adam knew well enough he never could. God, Adam felt like an exposed wire all the time, like at any point his most sensitive and dangerous parts would spark and everything would go up into flames.

“What are you going to do now?” They still sat on the ground, and Adam tried not to wince at how he was dirtying up his clothes.

“Highway robbery,” Adam replied, and Gansey frowned.

He could never stay with a job so long-- employers didn’t like people who up and walked away in the middle of their shift, who couldn’t operate heavy machinery, who flinched at the slightest noises and looked ratty as all hell. Gansey had his money, but Adam had other ways; for all that he would’ve liked to stay on the right side of the law, better to be a thief than a beggar. 

He watched Gansey scramble up after him, and closed his eyes for a moment as he prepared for the barrage of questions. Adam turned to face the statue, stone eyes boring down at him. “What if someone catches you this time? What if you get arrested? Why--”

“You know I don’t like when you deal in hypotheticals,” Adam said. “It makes you sound like a politician.” The _like your mother_ was implied, but low hanging fruit wasn’t his style. He took a casual look at his clothes, gave up on attempting to brush off any stray grime on his clothes, and just hoped he looked less like the homeless vagabond most would consider him and more like a… rich teen in a deeply mediocre punk band.

Gansey stared for a moment. “I’m going to Wales.” His voice was rubbed raw and still defiant. Adam stopped, a frown twisting over his face. He was grateful that Gansey couldn’t see his front.

He replied, casual and toneless, “Why.” It was a question that bode no happy answer. It was a question that wasn’t quite a question.

“I want--” he stopped. “I want to find Glendower. I want to go back to the source, and it’s been so long since I last went. It feels like- it feels like it’s time. Don’t you think so?” Adam held back a snort.

“Sounds reasonable.”

They faced each other in the middle of the street, Adam rough with a heavy-lidded gaze fixed upon Gansey, who appeared frantic and manic, like he was about to start gesticulating for no reason, like he was about to prophesize the end of the world as he knew it.

“You could come with me,” he spit out, finally. “You would be very helpful. You know as much as I do, at this point.” They were ignoring the obvious reasons, then, _you’re my best friend_ reasons, _you’re too stubborn_ reasons, _I’m in like with you_ reasons, _you’re homeless and fall into dissociative states at random and I want you near me at all times_ reasons. That was fine by Adam.

“What about Lynch,” Adam asked, avoiding the request by a mile (because that was what it was, not an offer not a demand certainly not a polite suggestion: a request).

Gansey made a flippant little gesture. “I can’t make him do anything,” which was a brazen lie, and “He’ll come along if he likes.” Which enraged Adam for all the reasons he couldn’t get across, and others he didn’t quite want to get across.

He didn’t ask about money, because they both knew Adam didn’t have any, and he didn’t ask about his life, because they both knew Adam didn’t have one. He hated that dependence. There was at times a beautiful balance between willful ignorance, amnesia regarding one’s condition, and a horrible make-belief that Gansey was just like him that made the pill of their existence easier to swallow. This shattered that, this notion that Gansey could whisk him away to a foreign land and dangle all the reasons Adam would need to go without ever having to say them. The pull Gansey had on Adam was horrifying, and intoxicating, and infuriating all at once. It was like noxious fumes, and Adam always pulled off the gas mask for him.

“And my mother is looking for me again,” he said, sheepishly, though not really, because Gansey wasn’t ashamed really.

And Adam dragged his feet a little and fantasized about the cushy office job he’d never have and said, “I’ll have to get back to you,” and walked to nowhere but away.

Gansey, meanwhile, made a phone call.

Gansey had died at age 10 and came back to life, miraculously, with no explanation. He travelled the world looking for purpose and a way to cut the cord with his mother. 

“Richard,” His mother began, and he held back a sigh. “In the passages of your life you’ve made me believe that you were made only to punish me for whatever mistreadings I’ve borne upon you.” Gansey rolled his eyes.

“Mother,” he began.

“What else could such inordinate and low desires,” she interrupted, “Such poor, such bare, such lewd, such mean attempts, such barren pleasures, rude society accompanying your blood, and holding their level with your princely heart?”

“I would I could,” he continued. “I can purge myself of many I am charged withal. They are my friends, mother. They are good people, and I ask you to stop-”

“Come home, Richard.” Gansey held the phone away and groaned as loud as he dared.

“I have business here. I have a life of my own, and my friends need me. I’m not available to help campaign for you right now.” His back had straightened, muscles gone stiff.

“And what about your family? After all we’ve done for you and helped you and let you set off on your own, you can’t even make time out of your busy schedule to, what? Engage in obscene activities with vagabonds?” Gansey could almost see the little frown on her face she got when he was being ‘difficult.’ “Just let me wonder, Richard, at your affections, which do hold a wing, quite from the flight of all your ancestors. Look at you. You scorn your family and call yourself better than us, than your father and mother and sister, while you prance along with some drug addicts and- and criminals.”

Gansey said, abrupt, “They’re not-- criminals.” Which was a lie in the strictest sense of the law. Letter vs spirit and all that. “I’m off, mother. Don’t expect me at another event until you can respect me.” His hands shook as he hung up.

In the office of Senator Gansey, a mother set down her phone and huffed out a small, angry breath, the most emotion she was willing to show, and called in an assistant.

Adam made it so that Gansey wouldn’t be able to find him so easily. Lied a little to a lot of people and proceeded to make himself as invisible as possible, stealing wallets and watches, pocketing things that ticked and flipping through things that didn’t.

When Adam was a kid, he felt like he could spit out the world. He felt like he’d been chewed up enough to know how to chew someone up, and he felt like the world deserved whatever it got from him. He was wrong, because you needed to be a God to eat.

“I’m your god, boy,” his father would say, and so the trailer was their church, the trailer park its own Mecca, (and there he went, mixing metaphors all over again).

“I’m your god, boy,” his father would say, as he beat him to a crumpled not-boy. Adam was a simple bug to his father, an embarrassment and a mistake, a malfunctioning beast that wandered off and almost got hit by cars and often got hit by him.

“I’m your god, boy,” his father said, and Adam was gone, Adam was forever marked by the religion he was born into, Adam was off-balance and could never come home. Gansey came in to ruin his life and Adam went along, because leaving was something intrinsic and horrible about him. 

In a roundabout way, he was where he belonged, where he’d always been and always would be, if the past was the present and the present the future, and if God lived in a single burnt out ramshackle building. Immaculate creations, every creature in this world.

This wasn’t Main Street, was barely a street and there were barely buildings. Lynch was there, which made his hopes of invisibility nil, but Gansey was not, which made him both 100x more tolerable and 500x more of an asshole, par for the course for a person like Lynch and a busy body like Gansey. Ronan waved him into the burnt out husk of what might have been an office building once, the sandbox of pencil pushers and pocket protectors dumped out among the sands of time.

“How goes the slumlord,” he asked in place of a _how are you, are you going with Gansey, can you please not go with Gansey._ Adam leant on the empty space where a door should’ve been, staring at the curled up figure of Noah on some bed as Lynch jumped onto it. Noah, startled, rolled onto the floor and cursed him out pleasantly. There was a strange contentment in this place, a deep seated joy at the dirt and grime but mostly joy at the presence of someone else who didn’t mind the dirt and grime. 

“How goes the king,” Ronan mocked in a nasally, inaccurate imitation of Adam’s voice. He repressed the urge to bare his teeth, as he often did in the presence of Ronan.

“The king feeds me well,” he said, as if that wasn’t the equivalent of baring his teeth. “You done paying off your blood debt to the Godfather?”

“Aren’t you busy selling your soul to the bourgeoisie, Parrish?”

“At least I’ve got a chance at redemption,” he shot back. “Talked to Declan recently?” And he scowled. 

Lynch snarled, “Declan is getting his dick sucked by some perky blonde intern named Ashley--”

“Or sucking a politician’s dick,” Noah piped up softly from where he was still sprawled on the ground.

“Yeah,” Lynch agreed, “Or that. So I frankly don’t give a shit what high-end black market cocaine he’s snorting right now.”

“Is he too good for the people’s coke?” Noah asked, faint and impassioned. “Is our coke too low class for him? Up in the senator’s office?” Lynch, as far as he knew, didn’t snort coke. Or do any drugs.

Noah was a different story, but he was tolerable and often lovable in his harmlessness and fogginess. The haze of drunkenness and the smell of weed/miscellaneous that surrounded him had turned to something Adam was almost fond of, a stark departure from the violence of intoxication he had been so used to for so long. There were times he was shocked back into his body from the simple fact that he had grown used to Noah in a way that made him, for moments, forget the fears and nausea that surrounded his memories of Robert Parrish. Again. The world’s past and futures melded together. He was three images superimposed onto each other, a triptych of child and adult and whatever the hell was next.

Adam wanted to say _you’re sitting on a couple million dollars between the two of you,_ but he simply shrugged. “Coke is coke.” 

“You?” Lynch raised an eyebrow, and Noah looked strangely delighted.

Adam rolled his eyes and took out a watch. “So. Your slumlord. I need a favor.”

Lynch barked out a laugh, grabbing the watch. “He’s not my anything,” to which both Adam and Noah rolled their eyes (this synchronization made Adam feel slightly queasy), “but I’ll see what I can do. You owe me one, hick.” 

“So much for solidarity among the proletariat,” Adam muttered. Lynch bared his teeth, and began making a call. His voice was sharp and barking, and Adam realized that it had not been when they were talking. He only noticed its cruelty in the absence of the gentleness that once was, a space you don’t realize was filled until it’s empty.

There was no snow. There was simply heat and rain and sleet and the Great Flood in the Great Forest, an empty Noah’s Ark and salmon, all those salmon swimming through the heat, swimming among the giants. The Great Forest towered above him, the Great Flood swept up the trees and beasts and birds. There was no snow. The simple truth was this: the earth’s geometry was confusing and impossible and all the roads lead to Rome, and still the salmon swam through the heat wave and the flood and the never-snow.

Adam woke up nestled into Gansey’s body once again, though Noah was there too, sprawled across his legs. There was a gentle quality to their weight, the clumsy way Noah held him down and the protective sprawl of Gansey’s legs across his. JFK stared down at him, a trio of peasants in his fine and immortal stone Camelot. Set in time, at his best. Who would make a statue of a man with his brains blown out?

They weren’t far from the husk Noah and Lynch and sometimes Gansey called their lodgings, and Adam felt hopelessly, painfully booted from his body. This was happening more and more often. His body felt untamed, unaccounted for. He was a possessed thing. Someone had locked him in his body, hadn’t even handed him keys to the control room.

Noah murmured, “Ronan went to go see Kavinsky.” He petted Adam’s hair clumsily, and he suddenly wanted to cry. 

Gansey said, inconveniently muffled by Adam’s shoulder, “We’ll go to the Barns when he comes back,” and there was no room for argument, and there was no reason for Adam to argue, and they all knew this, even the one gallivanting off with the druglord of Henrietta in his name, and Adam wanted, again, to cry. And of course, again, he did not. He did not say okay. He did not thrash and yell, like he wanted to. He did not eat the world whole, as he always felt he could. What a pitiful thing he was. What an owned creature. Constantly self-evaluating, only ever holding himself back. It was his body, it was his body that was supposed to help claw him out of his life, and it was the bag of bones weighing him down. Pieces of himself gone to the winds, and nothing left for him.

_THE BARNS_

The Barns was not for the faint of heart, and by that Adam meant it was not for those who could not love. The court was still out on if Adam counted among those ranks.

“You’ll come with me, won’t you?” Gansey begged though it was more like asked though it was more like ordered though it was more like what the president does when he says something calmly and it should be a question but you know you’re doing it no matter what. Gansey was a president. He was a king. Gansey didn’t need to truly ask his friends anything, he didn’t need to wonder because they would do it, because Adam had to do it because Adam had no choice in anything. 

Adam found himself running at the heels of giants, tripping and falling and ending up in wonderland, finding his way back and there they were, there were the giants, there was his body walking him away from everything he knew though maybe that was for the best, and there was Gansey, the king of the giants, picking him up and putting him in his place. Knight errant among court. His body drove him around, drove him to crouch in the shadows of the titans, drove him to be an owned thing, as Gansey owned all the creatures he found too broken to be titans themselves. 

Gansey ordered when he asked, believed that safety was greater than friendship, thought that the world was for him and none of his menagerie and so he had to shield them from the world and so he had to whisk them away to the only place in the damned earth that was love, full and whole love.

“Adam?” Lynch was banging around downstairs. Adam didn’t think he was comfortable with this part of himself being shown off. He knew the feeling.

“I used to want to be a scientist, you know that?” Adam laughed miserably. “I wanted to do something like-- chemistry, or biology, or, something. That I loved but would keep me comfortable. I like the scientific method. I like figuring things out. And-- making the world something more understandable. I liked to break things down into pieces and understand them bit by bit, and that’s what scientists do. And then my family--”

“Don’t call them that,” Gansey barked, suddenly sharp and lucid, as if he’d spent the rest of his time in a dream and was finally, finally waking up.

He didn’t quite care. “Don’t interrupt me,” he said, shooting him a glare. “They weren’t so good, anyhow. Didn’t let me ever be a good person. I-- I forget, sometimes. What it was like. To be-- nervous like that. That’s not the word for it, but I don’t know. It’ll come to me.

“I wanted to be a scientist, and then I let myself imagine being a driver. Not-- not glamorous, but steady, yeah? And then I’d get to… then I’d get to leave. That’s the whole point of a truck driver… going from point A to B, and B to C, and so on and so forth. And anyway I could drive through the Great American North and Great American West and whatever other places I remember hearing about as a kid. Through redwoods and snowstorms. Didn’t sound bad. And then this whole thing came on, and I got my ear problem, and left home, and realized I didn’t… I didn’t get that, either. I can’t even drive. I didn’t even get to leave.

“Henrietta’s a place for leaving, Gansey. It’s not your Camelot. That’s not the Henrietta I know. You can try and make her yours, but she’ll never be mine.” He tried not to hate Gansey for the pitiful (piteous? pitying? All three?) look on his face, and tried not to hate himself for wanting to cry, as he listened to himself. All that he was saying, twisted out of shape and into something sad, something worthy of a beggar’s tale.

Adam sighed. “You listening, Gansey? You hear what I’m telling you?” Gansey nodded, and a wry smile played at his lips. “I don’t think you are, but that’s alright. Go see Lynch.” He rolled over, a clear dismissal signalling for Gansey to get out of the guest bedroom, though they both knew Adam wasn’t going to be sleeping any time soon.

Adam left the trailer park when his father left him in the dirt. A neighbor called the cops and nothing came about, and Adam didn’t want anything to come about. Adam came home, but really he didn’t, eyes glassy and body wandering at all times. The world wasn’t right anymore. It was tilted to one side.

“I’m your god, boy,” his father said, and Adam couldn’t hear him right. Adam couldn’t see him, could only see vines and a dove and those salmon, always those salmon, drifting around pillars and ruins and creaky steps.

Adam left the trailer park in a daze, in one of the most undesirable, horrible ways he could think of. He couldn’t remember it. He could remember the ache in his feet. He could remember the sweat on his brow. Mostly he thought he made up those memories, because really all he could remember was the Great Flood in the middle of the desert and waking up suddenly, body crashing into mind and Adam, collapsed, nothing but a frayed backpack of meager belongings with him. His hat was gone, he remembered thinking. He never remembered much. Adam thought he’d been in a daze since his father left him on that step. He thought he’d never gotten out of that wandering, not until it was too late.

In the kitchen, Gansey pulled himself onto the marble countertop and Ronan stirred a pot.

“Where you going?” Ronan asked, rough. He stared down at the pot as Gansey stared at him.

Gansey swung his legs back and forth. “Ronan, do you know how old I am?” He said, raising his knees up to his chest.

“You’re twenty.”

“Yes. And when I turn twenty-one, I am going to have to avail myself of all that I’ve created for myself, because I am going to go home.” He said, monotonous. “I have nothing else for me. The monumental change I’ll have had will shock my parents into quiet acceptance and gratefulness that their son is not a vagabond, and I will carry on the torch.”

“And we’ll be there with you, of course?”

“Of course,” Gansey answered hollowly. “There’s nowhere else you’d be.”

“So for now, I’m going to Wales.”

“Yes.”

“As a last hurrah?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” Ronan slammed down a bowl of Unknown soup next to Gansey’s place on the counter, and another stayed in his hands. “When?”

Gansey shrugged, helplessly. “Soon.”

“Has Parrish even been on a plane?” Ronan looked at him, flint-eyed blank stare, and walked off into the house without listening to his answer. Gansey, in this respite, toyed with his phone, pulling up and then immediately closing out of Helen’s text messages. He didn’t quite know how to be a person without the “and.” How to just be Gansey, instead of Gansey And Helen, Gansey And Mom, Gansey And Ronan, Gansey And Adam. He liked being Gansey And Adam and Gansey And Ronan but he didn’t even know Just Gansey. Someday he would be Just Gansey. He didn’t like that thought, but it was familiar. He had died Just Gansey. He had been born Just Gansey. And he’d probably die again Just Gansey.

Richard Campbell Gansey III was a collection of thoughts and ideas that had coalesced into a fucking hypocrite. Contradictory wants and needs and hopes and dreams and at the end, a shambling coward that couldn’t even get out from under his mother’s thumb, that couldn’t even act like a real person. You die how you were born, how you lived. Nothing ever changes.

Someone was banging on the door, as someone always was. He went to open it. 

In a small patch of land in a wonderful and magical place filled with love and transgressions there was a small and shambling boy making his way through the fields of a place he’d never known and would never know. Adam felt like he was dragging along a body bag. Years of Going Away had made the creature he was and the body that held him two separate things. It was only hardy and strong when he went away, when it wrenched the control from him, a flawed and rare creature. What a waste.

Adam was in love with the Barns, so in love he hated it, and hated Ronan for it. He hated Ronan for being hurt here. He hated that he could tell he was hurt even though he didn’t know why. He hated Ronan for being like him. Unable to leave. Never able to leave. He could’ve been more, didn’t have all of Adam’s roots, and he wasn’t. He was crouched so low next to him.

When Adam had first come to the Barns he’d been afraid of the cows, which was funny. It was something he hid, not very well, because Ronan had sighed loudly and brought Handaxe, Ronan’s oldest girl, over.

“Pet her,” he’d ordered. He looked bored.

Adam put his hand on her. He didn’t know why he listened to him. Adam hated Ronan at that point, and Ronan hated him. But Handaxe’s fur had been soft to the touch, and she was large and gentle and easy to love. She was sweet and nothing about her was dangerous, even though she was huge compared to him.

“There,” Ronan almost sounded satisfied. “You’re normal about cows now.” Adam thought it was funny how he’d said that, as if declaring it made it true. Maybe it did, because he’d stayed there for a while longer, just petting cows and resting there. Even Ronan, standing over his shoulder to make sure he didn’t hurt his cows or some aggressive kind of bullshit, couldn’t ruin it. Gansey had been ecstatic that they were getting along and he was too, a little bit.

Adam went to see the cows on his own this time. It wasn’t that he was explicitly looking for Handaxe, but he was disappointed when she didn’t come to him. He scratched behind the ears of another cow instead, a young spotted one.

Footsteps came up behind him, and Adam was suddenly unsure of how long he’d stayed there, almost in a trance. Private places in a private place, safe and warm.

Lynch came up beside him, leaning on the wooden fence. “She’s dead,” he said, not looking at him.

“Handaxe?” Adam asked, resting his hand on the fence.

“Nice deductive work, genius.” He didn’t deign to reply. Adam felt a little off-kilter. He wanted to bury his face in something. They stayed like that for a while, the two of them not looking at each other, not looking at anything, silently leaning on the fence Ronan had fixed and fixed again.

Eventually Adam stopped. He turned to him and noticed the bowl in his hands. “That for me?” He didn’t answer, and instead Adam gently took it from his hands. Ronan didn’t stop him. The bowl was warm, and he suddenly remembered that all he wore was a thin jacket over his clothes in the late afternoon cold. He began eating, slow and then quick gulps. Lynch didn’t say shit and Adam was quietly thankful.

Adam didn’t start shit until he finished eating. He usually didn’t start shit at all, but Ronan was an exception. And he was sad, and angry. And Ronan was a fighter.

He began, having turned it over and over in his head until he figured out what he wanted to ask, “Why do you stay in a place that hurt you?” Lynch stared at him.

“You don’t get to ask that,” was what he said. Adam was so angry at everything. Ronan got to keep his secrets, and everything about Adam was so plain to see, so obvious. He didn’t ever get to hide. “You don’t get to fucking try to hurt me just ‘cause you can’t stand people seeing you. Fuck you for that.” He took the empty bowl from him and started walking away.

Adam followed. There was nothing else for him to do.

In the living room, he found himself standing next to Ronan as Gansey and his mother stood facing each other. “What the hell,” Adam whispered. Lynch shrugged.

“Come home, Richard.” That was all they’d heard so far. A command. Not a question. Adam could see where Gansey’d gotten his regal nature from.

“You- you find me, and invade my privacy, and don’t even--,” He paused, trying not to sputter. Adam saw his hand go up to his ear. “You don’t ask for me to do anything. You just. You just expect it.”

The Gansey matriarch’s eyes fell on his ear and she stiffened. She let out a put upon sigh, saying, “Will you come home, Richard? Where you belong? You’re missed in Washington.”

Gansey rolled his eyes, looking around. His eyes fixed on Ronan, standing tall with a raised eyebrow, and Adam, wary and glaring at Gansey’s mother, like some feral cat. A strained smile appeared on his face. “No, mother. I won’t be coming home any time soon. I still have business to attend to here. If I need to contact you, I will.” His hands were shaking, and Adam saw him clench them tight. 

Ronan walked into the room. “All right, lady, you mind getting out of my house now? Not a fan of loiterers on my property, and that’s my right.” Adam rolled his eyes at the posturing, but Matriarch Gansey seemed to be quicker to exit with that request.

As Ronan dealt with Matriarch Gansey, he went to Actual Gansey, clenching his hands. Adam was a fish out of water here. He was still trying. “Are you okay?” He asked, and Gansey nodded his head, but Adam could tell he was lying. “Okay. Okay. Let’s go somewhere else,” and Adam took him by the wrist, and led him to his room with its unmade bed, and he closed the door.

**Author's Note:**

> my tumblr is swordatsunset.tumblr.com, if you wanna find me


End file.
